Judicial Review for Patent Law

The Ministry of Law and Human Rights is to file a judicial review for Article 20 of Law No. 13 of 2016 on patents. As reported by Bisnis Indonesia, this is so the implementation of the Patent Law can be improved and also realistically executed. Article 20 has been hotly disputed and AmCham Indonesia has advocated for it to be dropped.

Article 20 mandates that the patent holder shall manufacture the product or use the process in Indonesia. The article also mandates that such a process should support the transfer of technology, the absorption of investment and/or the provision of employment. This has raised concerns from US, Japanese and European businesses over the complicated and discriminatory practices it may create for investors and existing foreign businesses in Indonesia.

According to the new Director General of Intellectual Property, Freddy Harris, the implementation of Article 20 would be unfair to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), as they would need to build a factory first to be able to conduct cross-border trade.

“If the [Article 20] is applied, imagine if there is an SME patent holder that wants to trade outside the country, it just doesn’t make sense if they need to build a factory first,” Freddy told Bisnis Indonesia.

He said that a judicial review is the most strategic solution, instead of drafting implementing regulations from Article 20.

It should to be noted that In Article 27 of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, the granting of patents is prohibited from discrimination against the discovery site, in the field of technology, whether the product is imported or locally produced.

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